The Death of Peeta Mellark
by Maria Sunderland
Summary: My name is Peeta Mellark. I'm seventeen years old. I was in the Hunger Games twice. The arena was destroyed. Katniss was taken away by the rebels. I was left behind. The Capitol captured me. And I am dead. - Rated M for graphic violence, and mature subject matter depicting physical and psychological torture.
1. Chapter 1

_Note: This multiple chapter story recounts what Peeta went through with the Capitol, from the torture he had to endure to the highjacking. I may also write a bit from his rescue to after when he's brought to District 13._

_Please review and comment. Ideas are always appreciated._

_~ Maria_

* * *

**_Chapter 1: The Avox He Named Delly And The Meat She Produced_**

His life was over.

Peeta Mellark accepted this grim reality the moment the clutches of the Capitol closed on him, crushed him, spit on him. They took him back to the metropolis, stripped him bare, searched him, but they didn't beat him. He sought Katniss amidst the chaos, his eyes wandering everywhere at once, sometimes so fast his vision was nothing but a blur and yet in that amalgam of colors and visions, he would have noticed her: her dark hair, olive skin, grey eyes - he would have seen her. He would have seen her through hail and dust, through clouds of deadly mists - he would have seen her.

But he didn't.

They explained briefly that Panem was in shambles. A group of rebels had materialized from the bowels of a district thought long gone: District 13. They explained Katniss Everdeen had gone with them. They explained that the balance of Panem rested on his shoulders, now that it was dangerously tipping. They explained that he was needed for the cause. They explained they could get to his lover, get to their ( _imaginary_ ) baby, if she were to listen to reason. They explained that they could help if he helped them. They explained a lot of things but he listened to very little of it.

He made an appearance on Ceasar Flickerman's show the next day. He did not believe nor cared for President Snow's words, but he went along if only to give Katniss time. If only to let her know he was alive, that he would find her. He called for the ceasefire. He got mad at Ceasar for claiming she'd done on purpose to destroy the arena. They knew nothing. He knew nothing. The show was over. It would air a month later but he couldn't know that.

And he was taken away.

They didn't bring him back to the luxurious room he had resided in for either games. Instead he was dragged down elevator shafts, sterile white walls of endless corridors for what seemed like hours. He grew tired and they edged him on, forced him forward. His moment of glory was over, he decided then. His purpose had been served. Defuse the bomb he and Katniss had set, drown the rebels in the gallows with his pretty words and the charms of the master manipulator. It was selfish to think of one person, a girl on fire, when thousands upon thousands of people suffered a war they'd created over a stupid fruit. He found he was fine with that. He could live with that thought, as long as she was safe.

He lost track of time. Hours turned into days, days into weeks. At first his internal clock still worked, trading the illusion of night and day until at some point he wasn't so sure. He was told once that very day was a Thursday. Then, on that same day, he was told it was a Monday. Some claimed it was September, and Johanna Mason, from the cell across from him, claimed it was December. The guards knew, obviously, but they played along with different dates and times. Annie Cresta thought thirty years had passed. She was adamant on it. Time was important for the prisoners of the Capitol and it was spoon fed to them like you would feed pulsing maggots to a baby. And with that, Peeta Mellark's mind slowly began deteriorating.

At first he would cling to the memory of Katniss. He would reminisce on the feel of her skin, the silk of her hair, the tempo of her breathing. He would recall the time they lay in the caves or the trains leading to the Victory Tour - the Quell. He focused on her voice, her words, her mannerisms; How, for example, she sometimes bit her lip when she was unsure, or she bit her nails when she was upset.

But as time passed, the clear vision of the girl he loved, the one he had been paying attention to since he was five years old, took the undertone of a rippled glass under water. One night when he could not remember the creases of her lips against his own, could not conjure them in his mind, he wept silently. For the first time in days, weeks or months, Peeta mourned his fate and the knowledge that he would never see her again.

Once, when they had neglected to feed him for days, they sat him in a chair, bound at the wrists and ankles. He was so tired, exhausted mentally and physically. Lack of sleep - they kept him awake with a constant flow of drugs and to this point he still had no idea how long he had been awake in this maelstrom of time. He felt ill, his chest constantly clutching like a warrior's fist. It tempered and crushed his insides. His eyelids felt heavy but the influx of blood kept them opened until he had to force them closed if only to moisten the dry globes beneath them.

He heard a faint whimper which he thought was his own until the lights came on, bathing him in yellows and whites and deep shadows. He was not alone. The sound of hurt and despair he'd heard had come from the red head shackled tight to the wall in front of him. Everything around them was silver, metal, looking sharp and deadly.

Peeta shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The woman with the red hair was familiar until he remembered she had been Delly Cartwright. Well no, she was not. But to Effie Trinket, who had witnessed Katniss' moment of kindness to the Avox, she had been named Delly Cartwright, so with a ball of lead in his throat, Peeta decided her name was Delly until he was told otherwise.

She was naked, adding to his discomfort. Her flesh was so light, white as cream, and every scar she possessed - and there were many - appeared pink, wet and rubbery under the light. She was so pale that her crimson lips appeared obscene in comparison. She was thin, her ribcage protruding grotesquely below near non-existent breasts. She'd been shaven of any and all hair save for the fiery mane upon her skull. In all this, she had every quality of a moth caught in a spiderweb, awaiting the inevitable end when the nightmare would wrap its long, crooked legs upon it and suck it dry of life.

Peeta wanted to speak, opened his mouth, clicked his tongue, realized the futility of having a conversation with an Avox, how offensive the sound of his tongue must have been to the empty mouthed girl, and gave up, pressing his lips back together into a thin, apologetic line.

She cast her eyes upon him. He knew she recognized him and their gaze locked together just as men in white coats entered the room. One of them possessed a thick halo of charcoal hair with bright red feathers sprouting from his pink skull. It reminded Peeta of a plucked bird and thought Katniss would have had a good laugh. That made him feel sad, so instead he caught the image of the man's head exploding but stopping mid-way and forgetting to continue. That was more rewarding to think about, he figured. The second man had dark skin and a golden mane, reminding him of a lion, and the third donated his nose and lips for a long yellow beak. As a whole, together, it was like a bird man had been split into three entities.

They looked ridiculous, yet terrifying. Peeta could not settle on which and so he watched them as though he was the hunter and they were prey despite the obvious fact that it was the other way around.

"Peeta Mellark", the man with the feathers asked of him. Silence greeted the Capitol man. He sighed and cleared his throat before he was heard again, more stern, his voice heavy. "Is your name Peeta Mellark?"

Flatly, Peeta responded: "Yes."

The man with the feathers nodded in approval, then brought a chair forward - clean, white, antiseptic looking chair with no sharp corners, only round sides of plastic. Peeta challenged him with his gaze, hard and determined; The eyes of a boy who knew what was coming: Interrogation and punishment. They would ask about the rebellion. They would ask what he knew. Ask about the Girl on Fire. And they would torture him and the Avox he'd baptized Delly Cartwright because he had been honest when speaking to Ceasar Flickerman all this time ago; He knew nothing.

The man with the blood feathers sat on the chair, smooth in his action, fluid, almost liquid like. He returned the challenge Peeta was sending him, then spoke in a polite tone that made his words cut like razor blades across the moist pink of a tongue. "Do you have any idea how much I _hate_ you?"

This took the boy aback. What was he to answer to that? Shouldn't it be the other way around anyway? He looked at the man in silence, dumbstruck.

Behind him, the other two men approached the red headed girl strapped to the wall. There was the sound of steel on steel, the glimmer of light as it hit the blades, and then a lot of red. It leaked like paint, thick, bright red drops leaking down the white flesh of Avox Delly's skin, tainting it. She made a sound of desperation, a moist sound like siphoned honey, which may have been words had she had a tongue to express herself with.

"Well let me tell you, how much I hate you", the man sitting on the shinny, plastic chair mentioned as though nothing horrible was happening behind him; except the Capitol man's voice was bitter and cold. Raw. Malicious. "Scum like you, who decide one day to try and stand up to superior people don't think about consequences. You're selfish. You only think about yourself. Everything that will happen from now on will be your own doing."

Peeta listened - half listened. His eyes watered because Avox Delly's shrieks were bubbling with phlegm with every slice of skin, of meat, of steak; the man with the beak and the lion man were cutting off thin slices of her flesh. Some of the pieces were so thin that as they flopped from her body, Peeta could see through them as though they were membranes. Each cut was calculated, meticulous. Artistic.

"Stop! Stop it", the boy pleaded, "what are you _doing_? That's not...! _**You can't**_!"

They ignored him. The man with the feathers continued. "You see, if there had been no rebellion, if the districts had not made any sort of uprising, we'd have the components to make an anesthetic for Lavinia here, and she wouldn't feel the pain. Unfortunately, well, as you can see, it isn't the case."

Peeta stood frozen in horror. Even after he'd been a part of two back to back Hunger Games, even after he'd seen people die, had killed, himself, a couple of tributes for his own survival, there had been no preparing him for the torture bestowed before him. It was senseless. There were no questions asked. They were hurting this girl for no reason. It was a sport and the hungry reflection of sadistic pleasure in the men's eyes as they removed more and more of Lavinia's flesh was sickening.

"And so, my friend, I can hardly stand to _look_ at you, but she, on the other hand, won't have any such _reservations_, I believe." He looked back over his shoulder at the girl whose name had once been Avox Delly and was now Lavinia. The Capitol men went about slicing her thinly, their blades sharp as diamonds, cutting through her flesh as they would if she were made of butter and they used hot knives.

The man in front of Peeta laughed darkly. "How long will it take for her to go in shock? To die? Oh, because we're not going to save her, Peeta, oh _no_. She will die. In pain. In misery. Because of _you_. Peeta. All because of **_you_**. Because you and your coal mine bitch couldn't play the game as per the _**rules**_."

Peeta begged them to stop once more, thrashing against his bounds like a caged animal.

They didn't stop.

Layer after layer of skin, red as the blue steak he was served during the Victory Tour, were removed. He watched helplessly, frustrated, as her muscles and bones were exposed slowly, at her thighs, her stomach, her arms. She began drooling. A dark yellow stream of urine slipped down her legs and from there came the heavy smell of ammonia, filling the room. Her shrieks turned to whines and whimpers after some time because her voice had gone too coarse and feeble to produce anything else. Her eyes were wide, pleading Peeta to do something, until he witnessed her consciousness turn hollow. By then her cheeks were non-existent and revealed her teeth below, just as the bones of her ribcage peeked forth where her breasts had once been. She was a piece of meat on a stick, crucified upon a sheet of silver metal. All meat. The human qualities she'd possessed once had been stolen from her. She was eyes, all eyes, but there was nothing left in them. She drooled and gagged and shook. She rolled her eyes back and forth and left and right but would not settle anywhere specific.

The men stepped back when they felt they were done, like artists proud of their latest piece of art, and nodded calmly toward the man with the feathers. He got up and waved his hand dismissively at Peeta. "Ah, the **_hell_** with you, boy", he said at last.

They were left alone. The Boy With the Bread and The Woman With No Tongue.

Alone.

Blood pooled at her feet, long streaks of maroon like paint leaking down the wall and around her. She looked like a painting. And he would paint her. Later, when he would return to District 12, when he would be taken by a powerful flashback, he would paint her as she was in the end: moist, inhuman, mutilated, humiliated, but not dead. He would try. Oh god, he would try to paint her dead, but he could never paint the right expression, or lack there of. Even as her jaw hung slack, her eyes were rolled back, her limbs were exposed to the bone, with blood covering the white as snow skin, matting her hair into thick clumps, she never looked dead - she eternally suffered, in his head, with the last conscious glance she'd given him - hate, so much hate for The Boy With The Bread - leaving a thick layer of scar tissue upon his mind.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry...", he whispered over and over again, even as he knew she could not hear him any longer.

It lasted hours. It lasted days. It lasted weeks. He didn't know. He couldn't know. But come the end he was wailing. He'd promised he wouldn't break. He'd promised he would be strong for Katniss, for Haymitch, for the cause - the right one, which he truly believed in. But now he was filled with guilt. Lavinia's excruciating death - it was slow, so very slow, every animalistic sound she made scratching at his sanity, making hole after hole - had been cruel and for naught. There had been no questions, no interrogations. They had simply murdered her. They had made him watch. And he was to blame.

He was to blame.

He had murdered her.

That night, in his cell, they brought him food. A plate of cheese and meat over a lettuce leaf.

Peeta heard someone laugh. It came from all around him, yet it didn't come from anywhere. It was the laugh of a man on the verge of lunacy, filled with pain, agony, filth and at the same time, it was empty. It hurt the hinges of his jaw.

The meat was thin sliced and raw.

The meat was still bloody.

The meat smelled like ammonia.

_The meat_

End of Chapter 1


	2. Chapter 2

Note: This multiple chapter story recounts what Peeta went through with the Capitol, from the torture he had to endure to the highjacking. I may also write a bit from his rescue to after when he's brought to District 13.

Note 2: Re-uploading this since for some reason some edits will not upload properly on the site. Sorry about that!

Please review and comment. Ideas are always appreciated.

~ Maria

_**Chapter 2: Talk To Me?**_

God.

Devils and harlems and evil doers but God all the same. The Capitol, for what it was to the rest of Panem, to the Districts, was God. It came and went and did whatever it wanted, however it willed it. It was a fragile God however, one that could be tipped if done right. One that could be burned at the stakes if captured in the right net. After all, Gods had come and gone since the beginning of time. None were truly invincible.

And that was why Peeta was here. Down here. In the belly of the Capitol. Within the machine, consumed, broken down by its teeth and spit, swallowed. And now it digested him little by little. First with their reference of unknown time, then with the screams of the innocents in cells around him, then with the death of Lavinia. It sucked him dry, that God, like it sucked the rest of the world into a shriveled mass, took everything from them, from their food to their very dignity, that which they already lacked a plenty.

Peeta closed his eyes as he thought those very thoughts - opened them at once. The sight of Lavinia seemed imprinted in his brain, carved there with a red hot iron rod. It left its trace, burned itself into the deep recesses of his mind. Her voice, her screams, her shrieks, they laced with his consciousness and wouldn't leave him. Even days later, weeks later - again he couldn't tell - it clung to him with raw intensity, cutting through his core as the knives had driven through her flesh. Even the sound of Katniss' voice couldn't cut through those screams, no matter how much he tried to bring them forth, shield himself with her strength.

Across from him, dark eyes stared, liquid, almost globulous in the dim light allowed for the Capitol prisoners. He glanced back at Johanna Mason, his back pressed to the metal sheet, by the metal bars which kept them apart. He'd drawn his knees back to his chest, made himself smaller. Maybe then they wouldn't notice him. Maybe then the Lavinia who haunted him would lose him somewhere in the depths of his bruised consciousness - get lost and never return. It was a terrifying thought only because it meant that while she could get lost among the pillars of his deteriorating psyche, then so could he.

His hand reached the side of his head, tapped it. Tap tap tap. It didn't make Lavinia's shrieks diminish. Not even slightly. He whined; made a child like grimace as you would biting a lemon.

"It won't ever go away", Johanna told him in a voice too merry to fit in any of this. "Learn to live with it."

"You don't even know what you're talking about", he spat bitterly. Already it was unlike the kind, thoughtful, easy going Peeta all of Panem knew him as. Already he wasn't alright.

She snorted. "Think so, blondie?"

Peeta decided he didn't want this conversation to continue. Not just because he couldn't stand Johanna's little remarks, but because Lavinia only screeched louder in his ears to make sure he didn't forget about her. Slowly, like a small animal, he crawled to the dark corners of his cell where she wouldn't see him anymore. Couldn't reach him.

This had a surprising effect. Johanna's voice gained intensity, grew panicked. Suddenly she sounded like a small child herself, dumped into a pot of boiling oil. From the shadows, he noted how she gripped the iron bars, how she rocked her body with the sense of a caged ape. He noted how her lips pursed over her teeth and blistered gums. He noted how her eyes grew wide and slick, how much more they suddenly reflected light: bright white spots like cataracts.

"Don't ignore me! Don't you _fucking_ dare ignore me! YOU COME BACK THIS _FUCKING_ INSTANT! **YOU TALK TO ME! **_**YOU TALK TO MEEEE**_!"

He didn't. Her voice, like a wounded and terrified bird, made him want to stay right where he was and cover his ears... only to hear Lavinia's shriek of laughter - at least he thought it was laughter - once Johanna had been discarded.

It wasn't long after that four peacekeepers showed up at his cell. He remained concealed in the dark corner of the barred room until he was forced out of hiding. By then Johanna had stopped her tantrum, thankfully, but it was only because she was as frightened as he was to see the white suits. She watched as they dragged him out of his confines, holding his arms behind his back, forcing him to look at his toes by curling a hand at the hairs of the back of his neck. He didn't fight them. It was futile. He didn't fight them, but his body reacted nevertheless, suddenly soaked in sweat and taken by tremors as you would a fever.

He thought the corridors were too clean, too bright, too white, for a place that harbored so much pain and despair. They brought him to a different room than the last where he'd witnessed Lavinia's gruesome death. At least from the sight of his feet - the sight of broken nails, bleeding where cracks had scattered into thin blisters - this is what he was able to deduce. He was hurled forward - slammed his face into an invisible barrier.

_What now_, he wondered, fighting a panic that was becoming all too familiar.

When he was able to get back into focus, he cast his gaze all around him, his fingers pressed against the glass which now surrounded him. He was trapped in a glass cylinder. A fleeting moment of confusion brought him back into the tube that would bring him into the arena. He would see Katniss. He would die, protecting her and seeing her. Her grey eyes and the smell of woods and earth and -

- a movement at the corner of his eye brought him back to this reality. He found himself standing in his transparent prison, wearing only cotton underwear and not understanding how and why that had happened. His jaw clenched at the vision he got, hands contracting with the thought that he may have been running out of air somehow.

It was Effie Trinket he saw, who'd donated her multicolored wigs for locks of golden natural hair - dirty though, so dirty and matted they were nearly brown in retaliation - her face still wearing traces of harlequin whites in large blotches like Peeta would sometimes wear after kneading dough from flour, her eyes surrounded by dark and purple paints, her lips, once bright red, smeared everywhere around her mouth but mostly up her left cheek as though it was meant to point at her ear. If she'd looked freakish before, it was nothing compared to now as she mewled terrible sounds of fear. The clothes were ripped from her, leaving her bare and vulnerable. She keeled, an attempt at covering herself while a fresh set of tears slipped down her cheeks. That one bold move of having her darker then expected skin exposed for the peacekeepers, for Peeta, revealed, was already affecting her. She was humiliated.

Peeta watched as helplessly as he had watched Lavinia, the tips of his fingers curling into the glass. They took the whimpering woman to another cylinder similar to his, but she was not settled by his side, instead the one after to his right. The glass prison between them stood empty for now.

The cylinder folded closed and somehow he thought could hear her, clear as day, as though she was standing on the same plate as he. She curled up, knees drawn to her chest, ringing her arms around her legs.

Peeta looked at her and she looked back. Their eyes locked as they had with the Avox girl, but the feeling of guilt, fear, sadness, didn't come. She pressed her hand forward, palm flattered into round, pale shapes - sought his aid. Her eyes, red from crying, pleaded. Simply he stood, but he made no further move to acknowledge her. He let Lavinia's hatred channel through him, his gaze growing dark and accusing. She saw it and recoiled into her own bubble of glass. Suddenly she felt a whole lot safer in the constrained space then she would in a large room with him, free to walk about. The good, kind baker boy, he wasn't taking any hell from this Capitol scum. He was here, not home, here in the claws of a horrible machine, because of her. Because she had reaped his name from the bowl a little over a year ago - or so he thought it was a little over a year ago.

Her fault.

All her fault.

Except it wasn't really. He'd soon regret thinking it was but for now he only stared and accused her. He wasn't so kind and nice and sweet and romantic, that Peeta, now was he? He was human after all. He was no saint. He'd killed too. He'd lied too. He'd manipulated the slum that was Panem. He'd hidden the biggest sneer of his life when the Capitol folks, full of vomited colors and wretched styles of idiots - when they'd gone crazy over sending love-struck Katniss Everdeen with a living belly into the arena. Had he believed it might turn things around? Had he believed he could truly save her from the obvious fate that awaited them? Part of him had. Part of him believed that these things, craving the blood of the poor to satisfy their need to masturbate over the suffering, the pain, the torment of the condemned, just might have enough of a heart to put a stop to the games, or at least keep her away.

And yet they went into the arena anyway. And yet they watched, and he knew, oh he knew, how excited they had all been to watch. Oh poor, poor Katniss, look at her, all in tears. Must be the hormones. Poor thing. And him, oh him... He loves her so. Look at them. They're so beautiful together... well unless they're covered in blisters and his face is slack from chemicals. Not so pretty now, huh? Oh, that's just disgusting. That's so... gross. But they couldn't, wouldn't stop watching, perverted in their need for violence and maybe, just maybe, getting some more private action in there. A little something to get the chastised, prude wives and the dysfunctioned husbands going without needing special pills.

Sick, all of 'em.

He only dropped his gaze when something caught his attention elsewhere again. His head snapped in that direction and already he had an idea of what was to come. What would happen all over again. His stomach clenched. His legs felt like jelly and trembled beneath him. He heard the bones of his knees as they struck through his flesh. Immediately he looked down at his legs, expecting to see bones through sliced meat. Expecting pain. There was none.

Darrius, former peacekeeper of District Twelve, was brought to them as naked as Lavinia, his legs behind him and his feet dragging against the perfectly white floor. The man with the beak and the man with the feathers with his hate and the man with the golden hair - they were the ones who were there again. Maybe this time they would cut him and kill him.

But Peeta knew better. If anything, Lavinia's terrible demise had taught him that much.

Darrius was shoved into the tube between Effie and Peeta. It closed on him. Immediately the softness he'd exuberated as they forced him forward was replaced by a new life. He sprung to his once lifeless feet and like Effie, pressed his hands upon the glass, looking at his tormentor with a fear so strong Peeta thought he could follow the thump thumping of his quickly expending heart through his chest.

The beast like men in white coats stepped bad, admiring their work. Again, the artists at work. The bird man was first to break the stride, getting behind a console a little further off. Peeta watched as he tampered with the console, then looked up at the three test tube subjects. He couldn't smile, his mouth rigid and made of thick calcium, but his eyes held enough malice for the three men standing there. He was getting off on this.

Peeta's lips pursed back, a mask similar to Johanna's earlier, when she'd screamed for him to come back and _talk to heeeer_. He slammed his hand against the invisible barrier several times. That seemed enough to gather the man with the feathers' attention. He took a few steps forward, stopped an inch or so from Peeta, who stood at least three feet over him in this position. He tilted his head slightly to the right, inquiring, vulture like.

"Aren't you going to ask me about the rebellion", Peeta snarled. He wanted to conceal the pain in his own voice, the fear, the fact that he could not bare watch more people suffer.

He failed.

The man shook his head, grinned a predator grin Katniss may have compared to President Snow's had she been there in Peeta's place. He wore grin of Capitol denizens who watch the Hunger Games on replay and fast forward to the juicy bits, all year long. The grin of a man who dreams of scalps. The grin of a man who watches someone's eyes and wonders what they would look like, dangling from their cheeks, gelatinous balls of puss and fluids. The grin of a mad man, really. And then he nodded toward Darrius; cordially invites Peeta to take a look - made it seem like they were at a fair, a circus : Panem et circenses.

Peeta didn't think. He looked. Again he'll wish he didn't, but then Effie looked too. He'll tell himself it's a valid excuse later.

Darrius gazes back at him, lost, unsure. He pricked his nose, his nose twitching as he seemed to catch a wiff of an unknown smell, then he looked up and his eyes widened in fear. Peeta watched as tendrils of green tinted smoke - no, not smoke, mist - leaked down like fingers, caressing first the red mount of his hair, then his cheeks, across his neck. They curved as lady fingers would slip down his cheek, alluring in nature and taunting. Darrius watched as Peeta watched as Effie watched; the ribbons wrapped around his torso and arms and legs, pooled at his groin. That's when his mouth opened into an 'o', his face contorted into a grimace of pain. Within the confines of his tube, Darrius hollered and went stiff. The flats of his hands hit the glass repeatedly, urging Peeta to do something, anything. Please!

Peeta didn't. Couldn't. He watched. As the citizen of Panem watched children kill each other. He watched behind the glass, behind the screen.

Darrius' skin bubbled where the tendrils touched, ballooned calluses which burst and oozed yellow puss. First on top of his head where the mist had slipped, coating his hair in jelly like clumps before they burned off and out of existence. Peeta could hear it without hearing, the sizzling of Darrius' flesh like eggs on a hot plaque, the hissing of burning hair, the howling of the poor man.

Peeta flashbacked to the arena, to Mags and Katniss and Finnick; To deteriorating material of clothes and nerve endings giving up. To that side of his face that went slack, to his arm which flailed uncontrollably, a ghost of itself, refusing to cooperate. To his legs that wouldn't work as they should, tripping into themselves.

But that was not exactly what was happening to Darrius. Close, but not quite. The tendrils dissipated into a thin veil of whites and greens, becoming one big cloud. It nearly glowed from its brightness, like perfectly white, clean clouds in a deep blue sky, while Darrius' flesh faltered into greys and whites and yellows, then purples as his skin bruised where it boiled, then red and yellow and green where the calluses exploded into bubbles of blood and pus. A ripple ran across the man's body, down his sides. It was unnatural, that tremor, alien and carrying with it all the agonies and fear and pain he suffered from at that very moment.

Darrius' head slammed into the glass - Broke his nose. Or maybe whatever what affecting him had made him soft where he should have been strong and solid. The appendage caved as a thin cup of paper crumbled with a slammed fist would. Pieces of skin peeled away when he pulled back, sticking to the invisible barrier, snapped free from his broken face like wet chicken skin. It slipped slowly, very slowly, downward. And then the rest of him, any part of him, that touched the transparent confines would glue itself to the glass, ripped from his muscles with no resistance. Darius realized this a moment too late, his brain refusing to accept such a grim reality until it was clear it could only conceal the truth from his consciousness so long. His eyes came alight, his mouth opened wide, ripped at the corners easily now that everything about him was so tender. He inhaled and the bright mist invaded his mouth. A soundless shriek escaped him, then a spray of bright red followed. Beads curled at his lips, descended across his chin. If the mist worked its way inside as it did outside, Peeta had the horrifying thought of the young man's organs liquefying.

Peeta made a noise. Something like a whine deep in his throat. That was the first time he reacted at all, too stunned to do anything further. He caught his reflection, a sheer moment where he thought he saw a ghost and he screamed, banged his hands to the glass. It did nothing to save Darrius. Nothing. He fell to his knees, heaved, hurled bile on the cold metal at his feet. He didn't want to look anymore, but his eyes were drawn to the jelly of Darrius' eyes as they deteriorated into moist pools and slipped down his cheeks like tears. By then Darrius looked no more human then the mutts of the arena. Darrius collapsed unnaturally into the tube as though he was made of soft, warm clay. Peeta made another sound, the mewl of a wounded animal.

His mind tipped toward a dangerous edge. He forced images of Katniss forward, tried to overlap them upon the mangled shape that was once a human being in the neighbor tube. There wasn't much left of Darrius now, but that horrible rubber like mask, with its mouth disturbingly wide and the sockets of his eyes as wide as the tongueless, gaping hole. He was all soft and slippery and bubbling now. He was but a thing, a human suit. A thing Peeta hoped was dead by now.

His eyes wandered to the other tube. To Effie. She rested there, eyes wide. She'd watched it all. She'd watched as Peeta had watched but he felt a whole lot more hateful. She had no tears. She was not trembling. She stared and looked like any Capitol citizen would watch the Hunger Games. She'd never seen someone die so closely. Only on screen. Only in the confines of her living room, or wherever it was escorts watched as their tributes murdered each other. She was smiling. All wide and full of teeth.

He loathed her.

He despised her.

Until he realized she wasn't smiling at all. Until he saw madness in her eyes. She'd watched Darrius decompose into this unrecognizable mass and as her fickle brain registered that fact, she was slowly, slowly losing her mind. It wasn't a smile. It was a facial distortion of unrecognizable magnitude because her mind could not decide on which emotion she should feel, which one was appropriate. It stuck there as a computer would freeze, skipping over its components until finally it would shut down.

When the first tendrils of mist slipped into her tube, he didn't really hate her anymore. When her emotions finally stopped jerking on and off in her brain, when she looked up, when her mouth opened and she banged against the glass in renewed panic, he felt sorry for her. When her hair stuck to her forehead and large beads of sweat covered her body, when she crumbled into a ball in her tube, waving the arms of death away, shrieking and crying and wailing (again he could not hear, and it was probably best that way), he thought he cared for her despite all. When finally her skin did not bruise and ooze and split open, when he realized long before she did that she'd been tricked, that this was nothing toxic but likely no more then condensed water, his heart swelled and he thought he loved her. Not as he loved Katniss of course, but as he loved Haymitch, as he loved Delly Cartwright, as he loved his brothers and father. As he loved, even, his mother.

When the tube was lifted and the fog evaporated into thin veils, Effie gained a second wind. Perhaps she thought she could get away. Perhaps she thought she had a chance. A slithering hope of escape. She scuttled across the floor, on all fours, and that's when the man with the beak caught her, propped her on his knees. She beat at him. Still Peeta heard nothing; could only imagine the sounds of she must have made when this... creature touched her.

There was a rush, a time of madness, tasting bittersweet at the tip of his tongue and acidic at the back of his throat. Somehow, watching Darrius melt away into a bloody sack of skin and bones and puss was less painful then this. He slumped where he was, shut his eyes tight, brought his arm over his eyes, and willed this nightmare to end.

Later, much later, he'll paint her too. He'll paint her as he would paint Lavinia and later the shapeless form of Darrius.

He'll paint a close up of her face, the sheer mask of terror, with her features stretched beyond recognition, with her smeared make-up, and her matted dark blond hair he was sure was really golden under all the crust of dust and oil. He'll paint her like that because he dared a peak once, and that's all he saw, and that's all he'll ever see. Katniss will see it, spread on a large 50 by 50 inches canvas, but she'll ask no questions. Maybe it's because of the many birds he'll have painted around her, small, nearly insignificant, like specks from afar, but with long dripping beaks and blood soaked feet and charcoal feathers. Hundreds and thousands of them, like flies invading Effie's mouth, nostrils and ears. Katniss won't ask because with that alone, she'll know. And she'll keep herself locked up in her room for a week upon that realization. She won't speak to Effie Trinket for a month, and later she will address her with her eyes cast to the ground because she'll feel completely responsible for the horrible fate she suffered at the hands of these men.

And for a while, Peeta will believe her responsible too.

As it happened, there was no sound. No sound at all. Even his breathing, flaring nostrils, the thump thumping of his heavy heart, none of it was making any sort of sound. When he looked again, the glass was covered into an opaque wet sheet of condensation. Sweat. Tears. Snot. Bile.

He heard a voice. It was soundless. But it was a voice. The voice was beautiful. He knew it, but could not place it in time, could not conjure who could sing so beautifully that even the angels would stop and listen, envy that choir of beauty. It came from nowhere yet it came from everywhere and it soothed him, at least partly. The deftness of the words made him feel like he could, maybe, hold on. With it came the familiar smell of sugar, of dill and of flour. With it came the smell of his childhood. With it came the smell of security.

The tube lifted. He rolled and fell three feet down to the floor from the platform, knocking the breath out of him for a short moment.

He heard footsteps. Crying. Shrieks. Please and don't and stop and Haymitch please, Haymitch, where are you! His arms crossed over his eyes, drowned the light as though it would render everything soundless again. He still heard that voice, but it was distant now. It was leaving him. He reached out, called for it to stay a while longer, then felt such guilt in wanting to ground it, to keep it to himself that he burst into uncontrollable wails of sorrow. "I'm sorry", he cried, "I'm sorry! But I need this! _I NEED THIS_!"

The voice drifted away, and with it, it took another sample of his sanity. It went to a better place, he realized, elsewhere where it was needed. He felt alone and empty now, abandoned.

When he heard a voice again, it was not beautiful. They made angels weep. It was not a song anymore because the words were being yelled at the top of Peeta's lungs, wanting so desperately to drown everything else. But it isn't effective. Not like the other voice.

Wear a necklace of rope side by SIDE BY SIDE WITH ME! STRANGE THINGS DID HAPPEN HERE - ( "It's your fault, Peeta", the man with the feathers whispered at his ear gleefully, all your fault, listen now, listen! Listen!" ) **NO STRANGER WOULD IT BE, IF **_**WE MET AT MIDNIGHT IN THE HANGING TREE!**_

His voice grew hoarse. The man with the feathers became agitated. He didn't like the words, the signing, the blocking him off. There was a sharp pain below Peeta's ear. He screamed. It burned. It spread through his bloodstream. He thought he was falling apart, even tried to reattach his arms and his one good leg. He panicked.

He felt heavy as though he was filled with sand, calling out for the voice. He didn't even need a song! Just the voice! The voice! The voice that smelled of his family's bakery! The voice! "_TALK TO ME! __**TALK TO ME**__!"_

Darkness met him. Silence. He was relieved for it. In it he wept what needed to be mourned. He wept for Darrius. He was a peacekeeper, but he had been good. He had been a gentle soul. And he wept for Effie, whom he'd gone from despising to loving unconditionally within the space of a few minutes. Effie, poor pedestal Effie. In all her mindless selfishness, she truly was just another victim.

He woke up with the taste of clay in his mouth. He woke up with the shrieks of Effie as she called for Haymitch in his ears. He woke up with the image of Darrius' pulsing face coming apart embedded behind his eyelids. He woke up with the smell of vomit and piss invading his nostrils. He woke up with a need to pop his nails off his fingers and punch holes in his cheeks. He woke up with renewed hatred for the god machine. He woke up with Johanna's dark, beady eyes gazing at him, her head crudely shaved, bearing an unhealthy grin of twisted madness as she held onto the bars of her cell.

And she whispered with a flicker of her tongue over her cracked, bleeding lips: "Talk to me?"

_End of Chapter 2_


	3. Chapter 3

_Note: This chapter was extremely hard to write. Mainly, I wanted to show the reason behind Peeta's hand twitch when Katniss watches him speak with Ceasar the second time and she notes his deterioration. So this chapter is about the time he left his cell until the end of that interview with Ceasar. He's been slowly losing his mind, but there's something else also that's rendering him in this state._

_Again, this is a very dark and heavy chapter, as this whole fanfic is, which shows Peeta's descent into madness with the Capitol's constant physical and mostly psychological torture._

_I thank you for reading, and every comment is appreciated._

_**Chapter 3: The Itch**_

One morning, or was it afternoon? Or perhaps it was evening... Well, one day then, when Johanna was returned soaking wet and dripping with what Peeta hoped was water - he didn't ask because he was too afraid of the answer come this point - Peacekeepers took him for a ride. That's how they called it because of the long backs and forths and lefts and rights of the elevators, thanks to the endless maze of corridors. Eventually he was regurgitated from the machine's belly back onto human beings' level. Or so it felt. It could also be another illusion, another mind game. His ears popped at some point so he figured he was either brought deeper into the bowels of the Capitol, or he was taken to the surface. He preferred the latter.

Peeta followed with no arguments though he dragged back slightly due to his prosthetic leg which had been bothering him a while now, digging into the stump of his knee. He'd been scratching at the scabs a whole lot, ripping dark red morsels of dried coagulated jelly. An infection had started somewhere where his leg stopped at the knee, and the soreness he felt now resonated all the way to his mid-thigh. Each step forced a soft hiss out of him and the longer he was forced to walk, the more his environment became coated in a white membrane. Thicker and thicker. His hands twitched.

The peacekeepers took cruel pleasure in urging him forward. They pushed and tripped him. "Hurry your ass, stumpy", they chimed. "Let's go, Lover Boy", they laughed. He cast them a mean look, reminded of the Careers of the 74th Hunger Games, and they snickered right back. None of this was coincidence. They knew what they were doing.

He made little protests. He moaned and groaned and grunted, but he didn't return their words. It unnerved them. They wanted further reason to beat the Boy with the Bread, you see, because then, when asked, they could say, "he had a filthy mouth! It was filled with coal, and if you'd smelled his breath, it was rancid and putrid. If you'd touched his hair, it was moist with oil, in clumps, smelled like dirt and shit and piss. And his hands. His hands smelled like meat, maggot filled meat, ammonia bathed meat. And he talked back, little shit. He thinks he owns the Capitol, you know? Him and his bastard baby and his fake marriage over a piece of fucking donut. ("Bread", Peeta would remind them, and they'd respond with "Whatever, shut your hole". ) He thinks he knows it all. So we taught him manners. Manners! Ha! Ha! See what I did there?" But Peeta never gave them the satisfaction and they didn't say these things. They kept it to themselves. Reluctantly.

He was taken to a room with lots of mirrors, lights, clothes and colors, not unlike the room his prep team had taken him during the Games. He was surprised to feel a certain ease when he walked inside. The warmth of the glow from the light bulbs brushed his skin, and the aroma of perfumes made his head spin. But it was all better, he thought, then the smells and bone white disturbing uniform light of the cell below.

His leg itched. His hands twitched.

Once the door closed behind him, his old prep team scurried from piles of clothes and wigs and accessories from hangers, followed quickly by Portia. A sense of relief washed through him. He suddenly felt light, thought he might just lift from the floor like a helium filled balloon. Portia greeted him, pulled him to her, and she made a noise between a squeak and maybe a sob. When finally she held him at arms length, she whispered: "Oh, what have they done to you", in an accent that was never very much like that which you find in the Capitol.

That's when he saw his reflection in the mirror.

Except he was seeing someone else, surely, because the boy staring back at him couldn't have been Peeta Mellark. His cheeks had become hollow with the sharpness that came with malnutrition and the dark bruised circles around his sunken eyes reflected the kind of agony that forced bile up his throat. His skin was ghastly in color, but his lips were blood red with maroon cracks down its middle. He was filthy, dirty, covered in forest colored and orange grime. His clothes were tattered, hung loose on shoulders once broad and strong. His hand twitched. It twitched and twitched. The need to scratch the stub of his leg was growing stronger, barely holding back. Only then did his nostrils acknowledge the smell of rancid meat, of sour milk, sticking to him like a plastic film, suffocating, choking.

"I'll take care of you", Portia let him know, and when her hands squeezed his shoulders, he took the gesture, fell into her and buried his face in her shoulder. There he wept, his fingers crisped at her small, frail back. When his legs gave out, she followed him, stroked the oily clumps of blond hair back, whispered sweet things. She was the closest thing to a mother he'd ever had and that had him cry with clumsy gulps of air, snot slipping to his upper lip and saliva across his chin.

She waited for him to calm down a little bit and informed him that they needed to get working. He asked her for what. She responded that it was for an interview with Ceasar Flickerman. He felt flabbergasted at the notion. Why? Why an interview now? Portia had no answer for him other then the gentle caress of a warm hand upon his cool, clammy cheek.

She helped him out of the grey clothes which stuck to him like second skin, washed the red blisters that formed below his armpits and at the joint connection between his thighs and groin. She helped him in a bath of scented oil; washed him completely. It took a while because dark crust had settled at the back of his neck and his back. Sometimes it peeled away a thin layer of skin because the filth was practically fused with it, leaving behind a very pink, very moist version of his flesh which burned and sometimes soaked in droplets of blood.

The smell of sour milk and rancid meat was eventually replaced by jasmine and roses. His hair, dark with oil and filth, returned to its late cornfield color. Portia and her assistants sat him in a crimson chair, still bare, and they proceeded to apply creams and make-up, apologizing profusely whenever he hissed as it burned onto chaffed flesh.

"It's alright", he assured them.

One of them, Calla, burst into tears then. The man, Joque, patted her back and rubbed it.

"No, really, it's alright", he repeated and made a strained smile, a pale imitation of the smile he offered weeks and months ago. It was the first smile he'd made in so long, even if it was fake and notably off his marbles, his dim eyes squinted perpetually tight.

And that's when the screen on the left, the one mounted on the wall that looked like an aquarium up until this point, switched on.

His smile faded.

The prep team looked at each other with inquiring eyes. Who turned on the television? Was it you? Or you? Or was it you, Peeta?

Portia frowned deeply, searching for the remote control. She didn't reach it. At least, not on time.

Not that it mattered, because Peeta had seen too much already.

Peeta was already standing, his fingers first strained around the arms of the rotating chair before letting go once he was fully erect. His prep team and Portia appeared as statues while only he was allowed to move within the thick string of time.

He'd seen her. Only a moment, only a flicker, but he'd seen her, there, with a gorgeous midnight bow. A building crumbled under the weight of Capitol bombing. It weighted at his heart because he knew there were people in there, people who were injured, people who could not have, even if they wanted, escaped on time. All of this was intercut with testimonies of people he didn't know, or couldn't place. Except one. Gale Hawthorne. Something swelled beneath his ribcage, a feeling between dread and hope. Maybe even a spark of jealousy. Because now that he'd seen her, and now that he'd seen him, he thought about how unfair it was that Gale was allowed to be by Katniss' side while he, Peeta Mellark, was stranded in the Capitol, grinded by the machine. Away from her.

His leg itched. His hand twitched.

And then she was there. On the screen. All there. So. Completely there. Not for a mere second, but for far longer. For him.

When he saw her again, he gripped a coat hanger like he would his cane not so long ago when he was still getting used to walking with the prosthetic. She was majestic; she was beautiful. His black angel, his girl on fire. He quivered in apprehension for the way the screen separated them. He wanted to reach out, stroke her hair as he did months ago on the roof; how they'd watched the sun set, how rested and soft and beautiful she'd looked as she slept. He wanted to kiss her lips, remember the creases of them against his own. He'd forgotten. Already he'd forgotten so much. God... Please...

She stood and spoke, strong and powerful, but he heard her as though she was under water, as though it was nothing but a dull hum hum of a sound. He clung to it desperately, and then everything was static.

She was gone.

He made a noise at the back of his throat, and with his whole weight pressing on the prosthetic, he couldn't hold on, even on his good leg which decided to give up as well.

Small hands surrounded his shoulders, little arms pulled him in and a new warmth pressed to his bare back. He stared ahead, between harboring and being grateful to have gotten a look, if only brief, at the girl he'd loved for over a decade, surrounded by the licks of fire and standing under a rain of ash.

He felt a breath by his ear. It was light as feather and cool, brushing as silk would upon his flushed, broken flesh. "You're stronger then they are", Portia told him, her voice as smooth as her minty breath."I believe in you. Never forget, the wings that hold you together. Never forget. Do not let them make you forget."

After that, things were rather hazy. They sat him back in the chair, twirled left and right as they applied make-up after layer of make-up in an attempt to conceal the sharp edges of death glowering off him. All over his body, they worked at him. The other girl of the prep team began sobbing when she couldn't conceal the dark puffed bags under his eyes. Coats and coats of blush and creams did nothing to hide what they'd done to Peeta Mellark. He was as quiet and gentle as a lamb, and he kissed her purple forehead. She quivered between chaffed lips, which she painted back to a natural color and instructed him, while she gasped between sobs, not to bite them or it would show that his lips were painted.

They dressed him well: a blue silk suit with padding at the shoulders meant to make him look more broad than he truly was. Sadly, underneath all the expensive fabric, they could not fully hide the toll the Capitol had taken on the clear eyed boy he once was. His prep team still shed tears because they knew, but now he felt there was something more underneath. Their sobbing was gradually going from soft hums and random sniffles to hysterical. Something else was going on. He felt it in his gut, felt it tear him from the inside like an ulcer bursting and infecting every organ the pus touched, gripped with slimy, cool yet burning fingers. They clutched at his throat but they didn't squeeze, not yet.

His leg itched. His hand twitched. Twitch. Twitch.

He reached to the stub of his leg and began scratching at it mindlessly. Portia gently moved his hand away but like a two year old testing a parent, he went right back to it with round eyes.

_Itch_

"Why do you only scratch that knee", she asked.

_Twitch_

"It itches under the prosthetic. I just want to remove it", he responded with half the voice he once possessed.

"No, you can't. We're out of time."

"Oh..." He didn't know what more to add. He realized this was one of the rare times when words had been stolen from him.

Portia took his hand between hers and pushed the last strands of hair from his brow, effectively drawing away little beads of sweat that had formed upon his now burning skin. "Now you look perfect", she told him. She let go of his hand and cupped his face lovingly, pressing her lips upon his briefly. It was not sexual. There was no longing. Only love for the boy, motherly feelings that she wished she could have expressed further until now. He'd grown on her, that boy, and it pained her to see him like this.

Her forehead pressed to his, and she whispered. "I love you. I love you. I love you." His eyes didn't close, and he murmured a gentle "thank you" for the first loving words he'd heard in weeks. She stood back and smiled at him, holding onto his hands as though ready to dance. "Do not forget me?"

He frowned, creating deep creases above the bridge of his nose. How would he forget her? Portia, sweet Portia, with her inflated yellow hair, and her kind eyes, eyes like Cinna. Eyes like someone who knows this is all wrong. Eyes that worry, like a mother should.

His lips parted into a response but he never so much as uttered a single word. There was a sound, like someone dropping a heavy object, yet there was no tremor that followed. No aftershock, except how Portia's hands nearly crushed his fingers with a near inhuman grip. The mirror was suddenly smeared in red, a dark crimson line so thick and perfect until it began leaking like tears. Portia's hands became moist and heavy in an instant, as though she'd been suddenly covered in a heavy, humid mist. They turned clammy, rubber like, then loosened and brushed across his finger until they lost their hold altogether. Peeta remained frozen, his eyes moving between the mirror and the collapsing shape that was once his stylist. Half of her head was gone, leaving her with a large gaping smile of teeth and half a tongue. Her hair, yellow and thick, had gone nearly black and thin where there was some left. Her good eye looked up into the eyelid and she crumbled like a half empty sack of flour.

_Itch_

He heard the noise three more times, a large fist knocking at a metal door, and then the shuffling of limbs and clothes as the three members of Portia's prep team collapsed.

_Twitch_

It became very evident then that their crying was likely not for him, but because they knew of their fate. He remained a statue among the dead, his lips parted slightly and his eyes glazed with a purple veil. A hand gripped his upper arm and pulled him out of the way of the stream of blood that would have stained his perfect shoes otherwise. He stumbled back with the same, placid mask. Somewhere, something creaked. Snapped. The peacekeeper who had taken three shots out of four, forced Peeta outside and shoved him forward.

Peeta stared ahead.

The stump of his leg itched. His thigh burned. He stammered. His hand twitched.

Twitched and twitched.

A man in a bright white suit matching his bright white smile greeted him next. It took him a moment to recognize Ceasar Flickerman, forcing himself out of the dark mist he'd cast himself into. Forcing Portia and his prep team, dead, out of his mind. Ceasar's shiny smile faltered once he got a good look at Peeta Mellark. Once sturdy, once charismatic, now he was but a shadow of himself. He liked that kid, he wouldn't deny it. Despite his job description, he sympathized with these children, got attached. He patted Peeta on the shoulder, but the boy made no response. It visibly pained Ceasar but he didn't push on, instead bracing himself for an interview that was bound to be difficult.

"Did they tell you what the interview will be about?"

Peeta gazed at the wall, at that invisible bloody shape there. His leg itched, felt like venomous insects were crawling into fresh made cavities. His leg itched and his hands twitched. And twitched. And twitched. Ceasar saw it, but Peeta did not register the way Ceasar's lips thinned into a fine line and the way he eyed him with pity. He gave Peeta a piece of paper, which he set in the victor's hand himself and closed his fingers around them. "This is for you. This is what you must say. Do you understand?"

Peeta looked at the paper from a million miles away, unfolded it, read the lines. He didn't understand what he was reading. The words imprinted in his mind, burned themselves behind clouded eyes where Lavinia concealed herself and laughed and screamed. The words danced before him. But he didn't understand them. The paper was soft and humid now where sweat had saturated it.

"Can I take off the prosthetic", he asked, but there was no one to respond. Ceasar was already talking on the stage.

Sea-green light filled the platform. The peacekeeper pushed Peeta forward, and he stumbled, only to suddenly catch himself the moment he was caught under the sheet of warm light. Peeta Mellark woke up under the spotlight, linked himself with the crowd as he had a few times before. They clapped, and raised, full of bright, warm and cold colors. Full of paint. Paint on a canvas.

They loved him.

_Itch_

He hated them.

_Twitch_

He waved and sat in the chair near Ceasar, who eyed him with momentary amazement, not understanding how someone could turn themselves on and off so easily.

On.

Switch. On.

_Itchy. Itchy. Twitch. Twitch._

The crowd fell to silence and Ceasar turned from the camera to Peeta, who gave his most charming smile.

"Peeta! Good to have you back", Ceasar welcomed him.

Peeta nodded, but his gaze was empty. Something was off. Beads of sweat hung at his brow."Glad to be back, Ceasar."

The interviewer seemed uneasy. Why? Empty looks, he'd seen for decades in tributes. He was no stranger to it. But it was the way Peeta looked away from him. Looked into the darkness.

"Ah, well, Peeta, tell me, have you gotten used to the showers yet?"

The boy's smile grew and grew and grew. It looked as though his face was made of rubber, the same texture as Portia's hands when her life had ended. He shook his head. His smile was broad, but his eyes were dark. And then they gained an unnatural shine, the light reflecting off them. "Nah", he said brightly, shaking his head with a chuckle that was robotic, "I mean, I tried, y'know, but there's just too many buttons."

The crowd laughed. Stale.

The stub of his leg itched. He wanted to scratch at it so bad, but he couldn't. His hands twitched, awkward.

"Well, you smell pretty good so you must have done something right", Ceasar said, seeking the camera. When Ceasar returned his attention to Peeta, the humor left him.

Peeta's leg itched. Insects. Nesting. Peeta's hand twitched. Again and again it twitched. And streaks slithered the over powdered cheeks. The make-up was waterproof, and in this light, at such a distance, only Ceasar was allowed to see the anguish of the boy with the rubber grin and eyes that had seen too much. In this instance he looked like an angel and a monster. He looked inhuman and yet powerful in his emptiness. The glamor man didn't want to continue with the interview.

He went on.

"Tell me, have you seen Katniss Everdeen's propos for the District?"

Peeta's pupils retracted, gave way to endless panes of ice. Cold. He didn't want to share his angel of fire and ashes, but he also had to stay alive. Stay alive so he could see her again one day."Yes, I have."

His leg itched.

_Insects _

_Twitch _

_Twitch_

"They're using her, obviously", Peeta responded while he tried to ignore the little bugs making holes in his flesh, lay eggs in his bones, "To whip up the rebels. I doubt she even really knows what's going on in the war. What's at stake."

_Itch_

_Twitch._

Except Peeta knew she knew. She was smart. So much smarter than any of them, and Ceasar knew it too. To see that bright boy reduced to this, it broke his heart further, and so he added, "Is there anything you'd like to tell her?" He wants to reach out, squeeze his hand as Portia had, but he kept his mic tightly wound between gloved fingers.

"There is", Peeta responded, and shifted in his seat. He felt her then. He felt her watching. His hand twitched. His knee... god, the stub. It was being eaten away. All of it. But he still starred at the camera, imagined Katniss there, standing with the midnight bow, in her midnight suit, surrounded by fire. Surrounded by ashes. Grey eyes and flushed cheeks. He could feel the heat of her stare from across the miles and miles separating them, all through that lens. And just as he woke up under the spotlight, his silver tongue came to life now that it held a greater purpose. "Don't be a fool, Katniss. Think for yourself. They've turned you into a weapon that could be instrumental to the destruction of humanity. If you've got any real influence, use it to put the brakes on this thing. Use it to stop the war before it's too late. Ask yourself, do you really trust the people you're working with? Do you really know what's going on? And if you don't... find out."

Silence. Ceasar frowned, then nodded at the voice in his ear. "It's over", he announced Peeta gently. Suddenly the crowd, so bright earlier, had become tern, lifeless. They sat there and stared as tarnished puppets would, as robots would. They dimmed and greyed with the light, still as statues.

He looked back at Ceasar and said with the cracked voice of a child who was crushed beneath something heavy, "it's itchy."

Ceasar's brow raised. "What's itchy, Peeta?"

"My leg. Can I take it off? There's something. Something in it. It's itchy."

"I don't think that's very wise... Why don't you -"

Peeta jerked to his feet, his features a mask of anguish and pain. He was not smiling anymore. Tears had mixed up with sweat and despite the waterproof make-up, it's begun leaking in streaks, leaving him a monstrous creature the Capitol manufactured. He laughed, a sound that was off-key; sounded like rust. "Why won't you look, any of you?! Are you afraid they'll eat you too?" He turned to the crowd, "are you afraid to see what you've done!?"

"Peeta...", Ceasar began as he got up. He registered the peacekeepers edging dangerously toward the boy, looking like hyenas about to rip the flesh off a fresh carcass.

"Well come on! Don't you want to see the fruit of your labor?! They're all dead! All of them and it's so itchy!" He gripped his head in both hands, fingers digging as claws through straw. His leg tapped uncontrollably against the stage.

"Peeta!"

He didn't respond, only glanced at the blue haired entertainer, glanced with eyes so wide and red with burst veins it seemed as though they might pop and roll off his cheeks. He refused to be broken, but now, now he was on the verge. Right there. He couldn't see the insects, crawling into his flesh and not so long ago, he wouldn't have believed they existed. Now, there was no knowing what he knew for him.

"There's no one", Ceasar told him gently, as gently as he did approaching Katniss Everdeen about the sister she volunteered for, short of taking his hand between his gloved ones, then motioned to the sea of empty velvet seats. All along, empty seats. "There's no one there."

He looked.

His hands twitched in his hair, long nails scraping his scalp and drawing blood beneath them. Heavy goosebumps erupted across glistening skin. He felt cold, then hot, then cold. Ice, lava, ice.

His leg itched. The insects drew closer to his heart while Portia, Lavinia... all those who had died because of him, to break him, edged further away.

The last thing that went though Peeta's mind while his body gave up and he collapsed, was that finally, in unconsciousness, the itch would be gone.

**End of Chapter 3**


End file.
